Conference Presentations by Keziah Poole
Writers, artists and scholars are increasingly invested in the project of destabilising dominant ... more Writers, artists and scholars are increasingly invested in the project of destabilising dominant historical archives through a broad range of media, and the role of cinema, as one such medium, cannot be dismissed in the (re)presentation and (re)production of alternative histories. Film is not, however, without its limitations. It has been suggested that the sheer horror of events such as the 1947 partition of British India border on unrepresentability, yet while filmmakers have found a means of coding scenes of mass sectarian violence into digestible tropes, the filmic silence surrounding women’s experiences of mass sexual violence during Partition is reflective of nationalist discourses. This paper interrogates rape as the “end” of cinematic representation in three Partition films: Earth (1998), Pinjar (2003), and Silent Waters (2003). Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s foundational essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which notes the cultural codification of cinematic “woman” as a necessarily sexualised object, the paper asks how filmmakers might produce a narrative of sexual violence without relying upon the figure of woman-as-spectacle. Is it possible to expose the violence of female objectification through a medium that routinely posits the female body as the site of visual and sexual consumption? If rape thus marks the limit of representability, how might evading scenes of sexual violence reinforce the damaging rhetoric of rape as social/psychic death, as the “end” of female subjectivity? Finally, how might Partition Cinema repeat or reconstruct nationalist rhetorics of “closure” surrounding the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women, many of whom are alive today? While official discourse paints mass rape as a historical anomaly that began and ended with the “madness” of Partition, the paper asks if cinematic narratives may be used to situate this phenomenon within a continuum of gendered violence that persists in silencing female testimony.
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The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously ret... more The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously retreated from writing for ten years. Disillusioned with the creative possibilities of her “step-mother tongue,” yet reluctant to write in the formal Arabic she had come to associate with religious nationalism, Djebar turned briefly to film to unearth the “buried voices” of Algerian women, whose accounts of occupation and independence in vernacular Arabic would reveal a rich alternative archive. These oral testimonies, however, would appear frequently in Djebar’s later novels, subjected once again to the violence of transliteration and translation.
This paper examines Djebar’s return to writing – both her coming back to the practice of writing and her writing back to the texts that have defined Algerian women’s history – in order to interrogate the myriad oppressions that forced her to lose her voice while tracing strategies of resistance to discursive control. Does Djebar, in her efforts to reconcile les cris (cries) with l’écrit (writing), succeed, in the words of Hélène Cixous, in putting Algerian women “into the text – as into the world”? Or does she risk perpetuating the very fallacies she seeks to expose in reproducing these histories?
At a time when the history of colonial violence is elided from debates about integration and immigration, and North African women living in Europe become frequent targets of populist vitriol, we might also ask: is it the writer’s role to give ‘voice’ to these women, and what is the impetus to make them speak? How does this impetus shape racist/imperialist ideologies in the present, and how does Djebar’s work destabilize this economy? Finally, how can we destabilize it by continuing to remember Djebar?
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Since making headlines as the first Moroccan woman to be awarded the Goncourt prize in 2016, best... more Since making headlines as the first Moroccan woman to be awarded the Goncourt prize in 2016, best-selling author and official face of “Francophone Affairs,” Leïla Slimani, has quickly become one of the most influential figures on the French literary scene. Noted for her ground- breaking departure from the predictable genre of “ethnic autobiography” and her incisive gaze on French bourgeois banality, Slimani has emerged as something of a poster-girl for post-racial society – a vocal proponent of Republican ideals such as freedom and equality and the “borderless” world of Francophone literature, Slimani appears to embody French “universalisme.” Yet, as Joan Wallach-Scott observes, such a concept is itself rooted in a very particular history of French nationalism and imperialism, whereby (especially Arabo-Muslim) societies cast as “anti-freedom” or “anti-equality” emerge not just as “anti-French,” but “anti- human” – even as this rhetoric is effectively deracialised.
This paper analyses the effects of de/racialisation and the negotiation of French racial/cultural anxieties in Slimani’s celebrated killer-nanny novel, Chanson douce [Lullaby]. Working from Sara Ahmed’s notion of racial dis/orientation in Queer Phenomenology, I ask to what extent the invisibilisation of race in the novel functions as a critique of “white space,” denaturalising the racial dynamics ordinarily concealed by universalist rhetoric, and as a mode of strategic assimilation on the part of the author herself – How does Slimani’s ability to “pass” expose “passing” as a technology of the State? And to what extent does the French public’s delight at her “passing” point to its own inability to get “past” race?
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Western audiences have long looked to Maghrebi writers for a glimpse at some kind of Oriental ‘tr... more Western audiences have long looked to Maghrebi writers for a glimpse at some kind of Oriental ‘truth,’ but in recent years the desire to unlock the sensual secrets of the harem has been supplanted by a quest to ‘lift the veil’ on a more sinister reality. In France, confessional narratives of gender violence written by Maghrebi women have met with public commendation and astonishing commercial success, highlighting sexual dysfunction in the Maghrebi community as a point of French national(ist) concern. Dismissed by critics as sensationalising and defamatory, the willingness of these women to ‘reveal all’ is lauded in French media as the key to their (and other women’s) liberation.
As Foucault reminds us, gender and sexuality often function as privileged sites of discursive control, yet it seems Maghrebi women’s sexual testimony bears particular currency. What compels these women to ‘give up’ their secrets for public dissection? To what extent, amidst rising populisms that seek to demonise Islam, are their confessions a condition of their assimilation? Is there a way for Maghrebi women to ‘speak out’ about such violences without being accused of bringing shame on their community – hashouma! – or aligning themselves with a rhetoric that equates Arab men with (sexual) terror? Finally, what do we make of French feminists’ condemnation of similar gestures in the #metoo movement on the grounds that it “actually helps…religious extremists and the worst sort of reactionaries”?
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Papers by Keziah Poole
Francosphères (Print), Dec 1, 2022
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IEEE Software, 2007
ABSTRACT In this column, IEEE Software aims to bring you the latest in requirements thinking. Sin... more ABSTRACT In this column, IEEE Software aims to bring you the latest in requirements thinking. Since Richard Wexelblat's pioneering 1976 paper, "Maxims for Malfeasant Designers," it's been clear that specification can be done well or poorly. More recently, Norman Ramsey has followed Wexelblat's lead with "Maxims for Malfeasant Speakers," with advice such as "Remember that form is more important than content: Make sure your visuals conform to corporate standards, even if they don't say anything of consequence." Similarly, Peter J. Brown's paper, "13 Deadly Sins of Compiler Writing," includes the memorable "The first deadly sin is to code before you think." That sin is certainly as prevalent today as ever it was. So, this column has scoured the planet for great minds on the latest in requirements. We're proud to bring you a tongue-in-cheek "interview" with industry guru Colin Codephirst.
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The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously ret... more The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously retreated from writing for ten years. Disillusioned with the creative possibilities of her "step-mother tongue", yet reluctant to write in the formal Arabic she had come to associate with religious nationalism, the author turned to film to unearth the "buried voices" of Algerian women, whose accounts of occupation and independence in vernacular Arabic would reveal a rich alternative archive. Focusing on "the gaze" and "voice", two key concepts in Djebarian discussions of Algerian femininity, this contribution examines the destabilizing impact of Djebar's use of material images and sound, tracing the strategies of decoloniality and dissonance she carried into her later written work. Rather than recuperating Algerian women's voices to make up the gaps in the national/colonial archive, the article argues that Djebar's films dwell in the radical potential of irrecuperability, exploring new possibilities of feminine resistance from without re/presentation and History.
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Expressions maghrébines, 2021
The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously ret... more The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously retreated from writing for ten years. Disillusioned with the creative possibilities of her "step-mother tongue", yet reluctant to write in the formal Arabic she had come to associate with religious nationalism, the author turned to film to unearth the "buried voices" of Algerian women, whose accounts of occupation and independence in vernacular Arabic would reveal a rich alternative archive. Focusing on "the gaze" and "voice", two key concepts in Djebarian discussions of Algerian femininity, this contribution examines the destabilizing impact of Djebar's use of material images and sound, tracing the strategies of decoloniality and dissonance she carried into her later written work. Rather than recuperating Algerian women's voices to make up the gaps in the national/colonial archive, the article argues that Djebar's films dwell in the radical potential of irrecuperability, exploring new possibilities of feminine resistance from without re/presentation and History.
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"Writing Resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film," reflects on... more "Writing Resistance: sex, love and feminine protest in Moroccan literature and film," reflects on the im/possibility of writing about and as feminine resistance amid multiple discourses competing to define gender and sexuality in Morocco and Maghrebi diaspora communities in France. Investigating the complex intersections between sex, love and revolution in an international culture industry that champions Muslim women’s rebellion, "Writing Resistance" asks what it is that permits certain acts of feminine protest to be absorbed into French and Moroccan national narratives while rendering others inaudible. Here, I draw on philosopher Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine: a writing that is feminine insofar as it disrupts phallocratic regimes of producing theory, history and culture; but perhaps more crucially, one that needn’t be an act of writing in the traditional sense at all. Tracing narratives of sexual rebellion across a range of creative and cultural performances in contemporary Morocco and France, I examine the myriad strategies used by women and LGBTQ+ artists and activists to resist being written into French and Moroccan national/ist discourse.
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Conference Presentations by Keziah Poole
This paper examines Djebar’s return to writing – both her coming back to the practice of writing and her writing back to the texts that have defined Algerian women’s history – in order to interrogate the myriad oppressions that forced her to lose her voice while tracing strategies of resistance to discursive control. Does Djebar, in her efforts to reconcile les cris (cries) with l’écrit (writing), succeed, in the words of Hélène Cixous, in putting Algerian women “into the text – as into the world”? Or does she risk perpetuating the very fallacies she seeks to expose in reproducing these histories?
At a time when the history of colonial violence is elided from debates about integration and immigration, and North African women living in Europe become frequent targets of populist vitriol, we might also ask: is it the writer’s role to give ‘voice’ to these women, and what is the impetus to make them speak? How does this impetus shape racist/imperialist ideologies in the present, and how does Djebar’s work destabilize this economy? Finally, how can we destabilize it by continuing to remember Djebar?
This paper analyses the effects of de/racialisation and the negotiation of French racial/cultural anxieties in Slimani’s celebrated killer-nanny novel, Chanson douce [Lullaby]. Working from Sara Ahmed’s notion of racial dis/orientation in Queer Phenomenology, I ask to what extent the invisibilisation of race in the novel functions as a critique of “white space,” denaturalising the racial dynamics ordinarily concealed by universalist rhetoric, and as a mode of strategic assimilation on the part of the author herself – How does Slimani’s ability to “pass” expose “passing” as a technology of the State? And to what extent does the French public’s delight at her “passing” point to its own inability to get “past” race?
As Foucault reminds us, gender and sexuality often function as privileged sites of discursive control, yet it seems Maghrebi women’s sexual testimony bears particular currency. What compels these women to ‘give up’ their secrets for public dissection? To what extent, amidst rising populisms that seek to demonise Islam, are their confessions a condition of their assimilation? Is there a way for Maghrebi women to ‘speak out’ about such violences without being accused of bringing shame on their community – hashouma! – or aligning themselves with a rhetoric that equates Arab men with (sexual) terror? Finally, what do we make of French feminists’ condemnation of similar gestures in the #metoo movement on the grounds that it “actually helps…religious extremists and the worst sort of reactionaries”?
Papers by Keziah Poole
This paper examines Djebar’s return to writing – both her coming back to the practice of writing and her writing back to the texts that have defined Algerian women’s history – in order to interrogate the myriad oppressions that forced her to lose her voice while tracing strategies of resistance to discursive control. Does Djebar, in her efforts to reconcile les cris (cries) with l’écrit (writing), succeed, in the words of Hélène Cixous, in putting Algerian women “into the text – as into the world”? Or does she risk perpetuating the very fallacies she seeks to expose in reproducing these histories?
At a time when the history of colonial violence is elided from debates about integration and immigration, and North African women living in Europe become frequent targets of populist vitriol, we might also ask: is it the writer’s role to give ‘voice’ to these women, and what is the impetus to make them speak? How does this impetus shape racist/imperialist ideologies in the present, and how does Djebar’s work destabilize this economy? Finally, how can we destabilize it by continuing to remember Djebar?
This paper analyses the effects of de/racialisation and the negotiation of French racial/cultural anxieties in Slimani’s celebrated killer-nanny novel, Chanson douce [Lullaby]. Working from Sara Ahmed’s notion of racial dis/orientation in Queer Phenomenology, I ask to what extent the invisibilisation of race in the novel functions as a critique of “white space,” denaturalising the racial dynamics ordinarily concealed by universalist rhetoric, and as a mode of strategic assimilation on the part of the author herself – How does Slimani’s ability to “pass” expose “passing” as a technology of the State? And to what extent does the French public’s delight at her “passing” point to its own inability to get “past” race?
As Foucault reminds us, gender and sexuality often function as privileged sites of discursive control, yet it seems Maghrebi women’s sexual testimony bears particular currency. What compels these women to ‘give up’ their secrets for public dissection? To what extent, amidst rising populisms that seek to demonise Islam, are their confessions a condition of their assimilation? Is there a way for Maghrebi women to ‘speak out’ about such violences without being accused of bringing shame on their community – hashouma! – or aligning themselves with a rhetoric that equates Arab men with (sexual) terror? Finally, what do we make of French feminists’ condemnation of similar gestures in the #metoo movement on the grounds that it “actually helps…religious extremists and the worst sort of reactionaries”?